"Boredom is the desire for happiness left in its pure state."-Giacomo Leopardi"Something that would reduce or enhance the feeling of boredom." - "We're not bored." "We're not capable of it."-Maurice Blanchot

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

another kind of echo

From an objectively literary or rational perspective this echo of a manifesto, regardless of its authenticity, is remarkably more coherent than the original. "The resistance" seeking to market itself here is smart to oppose the metonyms: Bush/Bin Laden. But it does so only superficially, and in fact ends up only reinforcing them, I think. In the end such simplistic alignments (sure to inspire a reactionary backlash, to be taken as merely confirmation of the PNAC worldview) remain a dead-end, one-way fundamentalist street. The fact that these greivances, however indeed genuine, are being couched within apocalyptic rhetoric is as predictable as it is ill-boding. Hardt and Negri fans feel free to disagree. Or maybe one should only expect such public statements to be contaminated by the worst excesses of the political power struggles taking place. All I am saying is: what if "the resistance" were to articulate a manifesto that remained on topic, precise, factual and entirely devoid of such end-of-history rhetoric? Such a thing would not be market-able, or would it? It would be a product of genuine, rather than superficial, cynically calculated faux-opposition. For the moment the frame of the debate remains, "you are either with us or you are with us." And the outlook for elections hardly augurs well.

Update: Christopher Allbritton at Back to Iraq 3.0 raises a few eyebrows and more, for suggesting he supports the proposed ID policies being imposed upon Fallujah...policies indeed eerily reminiscent of those imposed by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto. And the Brits think they have it rough. Got Agamben, anyone?